Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition 2020: Eight Personal Favourites

Despite the cancellation of what would have been their 50th anniversary celebrations, Glastonbury Festival are still, laudably, going forward with their annual Emerging Talent Competition and have publicised the full longlist of 90 artists. The shortlist of 8 is set to be announced this week. [edit: has now been announced]

Many years ago I was part of the team that listened to thousands of submissions to Glastonbury's 'ETC', helping to select many new and independent acts who went on to play a range of venues including the biggest stages at the festival. It resulted in the first appearances at the festival for award-winning artists like Emily Barker and massively popular bands who went on to garner main stage bookings at other major festivals like The Subways and Scouting for Girls. It's also how I came to work with The Hysterical Injury, Annie having been the one-time drummer for one of my favourite bands ever, discovered through the contest, Venus Bogardus.

I no longer have anything to do with the festival or the competition, but I'm always interested to see and hear what comes through, and this year, as in 2013, I've listened through to the longlist and picked out eight highlights of my own. Is there any reason anyone should pay any attention whatsoever to my idle musings? The bad news for the artists named here is that to date (other than when I was actually on the team), the festival has never chosen any of the the same acts as I have for their shortlist. On the other hand, last time I did pick out Nadine Shah a mere five years ahead of her being robbed of the Mercury Prize.

But the more important reason you should pay attention is, thanks to my impeccable taste they're all worth hearing for their own sake. Here are my eight:

TEE

TEE · Crown Of Thorns (ft LAUREN IYRA & Little Grace)

R.A.E.



Otis Mensah


Matilda Mann



Julia-Sophie


DITZ


Courting


BYFYN


If you'd like to cast your own judgement, [almost all of] the rest of this year's longlist can be found here - one act listed on the official page whom I never managed to find was the un-Googlable 'Charles' - Charles, whoever you are, who knows? You might have been the best of the lot.

Ralfe Band, Piney Gir - Sebright Arms, London, January 29 2020

View this post on Instagram

I did not get a good picture of @ralfe_band tonight, so have these instead. Magnificent show.

A post shared by Wes White (@whysweetlie) on Jan 29, 2020 at 3:40pm PST

It's a crisp, dry night as we walk out to Hackney's Sebright Arms, a venue with live music history dating back to at least the 19th Century which turns out to be about 10 minutes from our door. They're having a hard time with the pipes for the Camden Hells, I'm drinking a draught cider anyway*

It's a basement venue - love a basement venue. They invoke fond memories of Bath Moles and St James Wine Vaults for me. We head down the stairs trying not to spill too much drink and wondering how they manage access for people in wheelchairs (they don't). On the way down, a woman behind us is saying, "Piney Gir is playing! I just saw that Piney Gir is playing! I didn't know Piney Gir was playing". And I say, "Yes", because it's just us and her. When we get to the foot of the stairs, there is nobody behind us.

The young woman on the door stamps our hands with a 'no ice-cream' symbol. Then it's just us and Piney Gir and her band in the basement. They are wearing sky-blue jumpsuits. We wait.

Piney Gir takes the stage. It's been trailed as a duo tonight, but it's actually a four-piece - Piney herself with Garo Nahoulakian on guitar and two backing singers. If you're like me, you will have failed to pay due attention until this moment, resulting in a limited and inaccurate impression of who and what Piney Gir is, centred on her Country Roadshow incarnation. It might even have passed you by that Piney is formerly of the The Schla La Las.

Pastiche aside, and this will be no news to anyone who has been paying attention, Piney Gir's sound is some considerable distance away from country, dancing somewhere closer to indie pop with a vocal that at times could be straight out of a 60s doo-wop record (this is directly referenced on stage when they play 'Peanut Butter Malt Shop Heartthrob', a single somehow available at gigs in the form of a jar of peanut butter and apparently written in response to being thought of by one or more commentators as doo-wop anyway). Piney seems to enjoy flirting with people's attempts to pigeonhole her music - they also have a song called Puppy Love.

It's not all marshmallow kisses, though. Ghostly night terrors and vampires make appearances, too. Altogether the show is quirky and charming, although I felt slightly faltering until the closing number, 'Longest Day of Spring', which the band and Piney in particular go at with gusto, absolutely owning the room.



The basement is busy already for Piney's set, but it's packed for Ralfe Band, last seen live in the smoke more than five years ago. It's been some considerable time since they played any gigs anywhere, in fact - Oly Ralfe's solo exploits notwithstanding. It has been worth the wait. 'Open Eye', from second album 'Attic Thieves', is an early high point among high points. Oly refers back to the lyric about fatally wounding his head (clarifying - he didn't - but he might have), then shifts his long frame across the stage to a point directly under a large beam... but happily no blood is spilt tonight. The mood is celebratory from start to finish, as the band move confidently from early favourites like 'Parkbench Blues' and 'Crow' to more recent material including the new single, 'Sweating It Out', and back again. One of the best moments of all comes when Oly brings Piney Gir back onto the stage, armed with maracas for a duet of 'Come on Go Wild'. This raucous upbeat version feels like the way the song was always meant to be, really, and at least a section of the audience is suitably exhorted to Bacchanalian frenzy. The encore features the totemic instrumental March of the Pams, which has the basement denizens of the Sebright Arms chanting 'hey... hey... hey... hey' in unison. In ancient times, while promoting gigs for their first album, Oly sent an email invitation out to fans that finished 'let's get salt in our hair' - this, while I've never heard anyone repeat it (including Oly, and he doesn't remember sending it), has ever since been my favourite expression for 'let's have a good time at a gig'. We got salt in our hair tonight.





*I say 'draught cider', obscurely, because that sounds like it could be the kind of proper scrumpy a good Somerset boy might drink, but it was actually Magners Dark Fruits because the Magners Superbasic was off. My gothly heart pretended I'd ordered a cider and black.

So it *is* still there...

The last twelve months or so - maybe more - have been a desert, in terms of new music, for me. Incredibly, those conversations with friends about the tragic demise of MySpace, of all things, still come around (another thing to blame Rupert Murdoch for). It got so I was hearing so little music, that almost *any* new song would give me tingles. Incidental music overheard in a shopping centre, maybe. Some poor tune twisted into a po-faced version of itself an advert for an app. Daytime radio, god help me (ok, I admit, I'm making it up, now). Where do young folk - any folk - find their music nowadays? They don't have MySpace! They don't have mix CDs! It's a mystery, at least to a man who's never really gotten along with that Spotify. Where do they find it? Not on my unwritten blog, that's for sure. It's a comfort as a blogger to know that one sure reason no-one might be reading your blog, is that you haven't written it in the first place, anyway.

Anyway:

I know that there is fantastic music coming out all the time, but nobody needs me to tell them about David Bowie or Radiohead or PJ Harvey. So here are some things I heard that I loved, lately, and made me think maybe it's still worth listening out for things after all.

Faith Elliott's 'Insects' is on Song, By Toad records and if you don't think that Pyrite Ammonite is a beautiful poem of a song then you probably shouldn't listen to anything I say ever again:



And Penelope Isles have this out on Art Is Hard records and they are apparently a brother-sister duo, which as we all know can only be a good thing and what we all have to say next is "are there really only two of them, how do they make that sound?!" Actually their Facebook lists four of them in the band, which is definitely cheating as far as that's concerned, but cheating is allowed if you end up with something like this:



Also, Thought Forms are crowdfunding for their 65 Days of Static support slots and you can still pledge for CDs and t-shirts and extraordinary unique things but we are not going to talk about the beautiful beautiful purple vinyl which has sold out because we will both just weep about it if we do. Okay? Okay.

Free download, today only. Excellent Birds' Patti Smith cover, 'Ghost Dance'

Excellent Birds [Annie Gardiner of Hysterical Injury in her solo electro side project] has sprung out of nowhere a free download of her cover of Patti Smith's 'Ghost Dance'. If you want it, you'll need to download it now, because it's going back to streaming-only at some point tonight.

I love the bells and vocals on this cover of one of Annie's heroes' songs. It's a track she's often incorporated into the extended outro of 'Rainbow Thunderclap' at Hysterical Injury live shows, which she and Tom tend to improvise at length.


'Like' Excellent Birds on Facebook

Nastly Little Lonely - 'Son of the Flies' EP

Nasty Little Lonely were previously known as 'Rock In Your Pocket'. Or, they're a new band with exactly the same members as 'Rock In Your Pocket' had when it was laid to rest - take your pick. It would barely merit mentioning - seeing as, for example, the new band/name has gotten itself twice as many 'likes' you-know-where as the previous had in no time; so they appear to have shrugged off the old skin with some aplomb. But what strikes me is what hasn't changed - 'Little'. 'In your pocket'. Still with the diminutive. This isn't an attempt to reframe the band as a behemoth - it's simply refocusing on the emotive. It's a curious phrase, too, 'Nasty Little Lonely'. After the first two you expect the third word to be some kind of pejorative noun; 'nasty little beggar' or similar. But the rug's pulled out with 'lonely' - it's just another adjective, and a sympathetic adjective at that. What's a 'lonely' look like? And is the nasty little thing just looking for a friend..?

So it confounds expectations, a little. At once cutesy and macabre, NLL's new name (like the old one) has something of the feel of a Nightmare Before Christmas, or any number of customised My Little Ponies, or a lesser Daemon in Warhammer - creatures, on the whole, with big enough eyes to let you get close, but sharp enough teeth to leave a mark if you do.

All of this does rather suit the music. "I took you to my heart / but you ate it!", Charlie Beddoes exclaims in the title track of their debut EP, 'Son of the Flies'. The delivery is between a whisper and a squeal, and she sounds, here, delighted in at least equal measure as she is disgusted by the prospect of having her vital organs devoured.

Beddoes' vocals sound throughout the EP like mischievously imparted confidences - they are the juicy bait that lures you in. The instruments (including her own bass) are then the three-barbed steel hook you're made to wriggle on.



'Lizardbrain' is the standout track, its central riff like a Marshall amp falling down a flight of stairs in a Warner Bros cartoon; and is packed full of those tempting-but-deadly, poison apple images, embedded in internal rhymes - "A rose with a thorn is, just one of those warnings" - the band utterly revel in the squalor of it, evoking memories of Daisy Chainsaw or a roughed-up Garbage - while the remaining tracks, 'Turn the Screw' and 'Jesus Complex', go off and get stoned together to a Nirvana b-side.

Without wanting to overdo the Katie Jane Garside pointers, there is something of that tone to Beddoes' delivery and the flavour of the imagery. With QueenAdreena apparently on indefinite hiatus, their fans could do a lot worse than to look to Nasty Little Lonely for more anti-lullabies. Beyond that, there's a whole world of Emily-the-Stranges and her would-be-boyfriends out there just waiting to stumble on a band like this. 'We're all in the gutter', as the band have said in interviews past, 'but some of us quite like it here'.

Kutiman does Tokyo

If you don't know Kutiman yet, think of him as the ultimate mash-up artist. The Israeli producer caused a storm a few years back with his Thru-You project, which took scores of hitherto unknown musicians' YouTube clips, and (unknown to the musicians themselves until it was released) blended their sounds to produce 7 totally new pieces of music, crediting every one of them along the way. The results are inspiring and at times surprisingly emotional. He used the same technique for My Favorite Color, with similar results.

Since then Kutiman's been going out and finding original sounds from musicians all over given cities - including quite movingly his hometown of Jerusalem - making audio-tapestries that capture something of the spirit of the place and again show off numerous individual musicians to spectacular effect. This week Tokyo got the Kutiman treatment. See also the pieces made in Jerusalem and Krakow, and the ultimate Led Zeppelin cover, below.

Now... how do we get him to come to Bristol...

Experience an ANTA gig on your own tabletop

Just press play, and then click the image.

 

You can buy 'Centurionaut' from ANTA's bandcamp.

Playlist from Drunken Werewolf

This month, the Bristol-based music magazine Drunken Werewolf sought and achieved £3,000 of funding to give the publication an invested future, and which will hopefully see the re-instigation of their print edition.

I chipped in a fiver (I'll admit a vested interest - the magazine and its editor, Tiffany Daniels, have long been major champions of the band I manage. The longer and louder they're able to shout, the better, as far as I'm concerned...)

My pledge was for a personalised playlist to a theme of my choosing, and after a few moments thought, I plumped for one themed around the title of this blog. So this is the 'Heartbeat of a Rabbit' playlist by Drunken Werewolf, and anything connected with heartbeats and rabbits was fair game.

I asked Tiffany to say a few words about each of the songs, which will appear directly after your musical video slideshow...



Drunken Werewolf editor Tiffany Daniels on her Heartbeat of a Rabbit playlist:

Tori Amos – Mr Zebra

Taken from her Boys for Pele album – the same one that features Tori suckling a pig on the back cover – “Mr Zebra” is like a backward Alice in Wonderland, with Tori singing as the white rabbit lost in a Russian landscape. It deals cryptically with her miscarriage of the same year.

Florence and the Machine – Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)

This song doesn’t signify my tastes at all, but it’s so obvious I found my fingers writing down its name despite myself. I don’t know what it’s got to do with rabbits, but the video is pretty debaucherous in a Madhatters tea party kind of way.

Annie – Heartbeat

I was absolutely addicted to this song when it came out. It’s fifty times better than her breakthrough single “Bubblegum” and it puts Robyn to shame.

You Say Party! We Say Die! – Monster (RAC Remix)

You Say Party! We Say Die! are great in their rowdier moments, but I find their synth based songs need an added kick, which is why I’ve listed the RAC Remix of “Monster” rather than the original. See also the Los Campesinos! version of “Laura Palmer’s Prom” for heartbeat inspired lyrics set to an infectious tune.

Warpaint – Lissie’s Heart Murmur

Warpaint are one of those bands who are simultaneously amazing and frustrating. I don’t know what it is that compels me to listen to their debut album; at times I find it lacks something crucial but other times I’m completely captivated by it.

Ill Ease – What Makes Your Heart Go Boom (Napoleon IIIrd Remix)

Another song in need of a remix, though in fairness Napoleon IIIrd has dared to tread where no others will go. Most of Ill Ease’s music is stripped back no-age, but here the Leeds producer makes her sound almost twee.

Bright Eyes – Down a Rabbit Hole

The first Bright Eyes album I ever bought was Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. I soon realised I was shouting his praises under false pretences, and though I’ve grown to appreciate his acoustic based material, I really wish he’d continued this creative highway.

Emmy the Great – Two Steps Forward

One of the few artists whose lyrics I know well enough to sing every song aloud, Emmy the Great likes falling down rabbit holes. My sister did that once and she got her foot stuck, it wasn’t funny.

Find out more about Drunken Werewolf here.

Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition 2013: Who I'd Have Picked

I don't think music blogs, in general, are the kind of publications that seek or require any kind of external or pre-existing justification for their existence - but if I ever did feel I needed one for this site, it'd be my close involvement in the set up and first four years of Glastonbury Festival's Emerging Talent Competition [or 'ETC'].

That's where I came to realise what a huge amount of amazing music there is being made constantly in this country and beyond, that I feel a lot of people don't really have a chance of hearing unless they actively go looking for it (but, if you do, there it is... it's not hard). Happily Glastonbury now post their whole ETC longlist of 120 acts, chosen from thousands of applicants by a select band of music bloggers (which is a great way to do it), on their website.

This also means obsessives like me can spend days trawling through all those songs, in the name of seeking out who they'd have put in the finals if it had been up to them. And my own picks are below.

I was careful to avoid learning who had made the actual finals before drawing up my own list, because I didn't want that to influence it either way. As it happens, the official list is of eight entirely different acts, which doesn't surprise me at all - but there could easily have been a lot more crossover.

Some disclaimers:

- This is not in any way intended as a diss to any of the Festival's picks or the finalists themselves (or the bloggers who longlisted them).
- This doesn't mean that these artists 'would have got through' when I was working for the competition. I was one of a panel of listeners who drew up the longlist - some things I loved didn't get through, some things I wasn't personally over the moon about did. Also, most years, the selection of finalists *from* that longlist was done by the main festival bookers.
- If you're one of the bands I've listed here, no, I'm very sorry, I can't get you a Glastonbury slot. Also, don't get too excited, nobody reads my blog ; )
- There was some really great stuff on the longlist that would easily have made the list in place of some of these on a different day. I kept it to eight because that's how many acts are in the actual finals. I think there should be a lot more!

Without further ado, and in no particular order... Who the Heartbeat of a Rabbit blog Would Have Picked from the Glasto Emerging Talent Competition Longlist, 2013:

1. Super Squarecloud
(longlisted by Neon Filler)

2. Nadine Shah
(longlisted by Neon Filler)


3. Katie Cruel
(longlisted by Oliver of Hotcakes.fm)

4. We/Are/Animal
(longlisted by the405)



5. Croupier
(longlisted by Faded Glamour)

6. Sandunes
(longlisted by White Noise)

7. The Gorgeous Colours
(longlisted by Crack in the Road)

8. Packt
(longlisted by Song, By Toad)


Hope you found something there you liked. Please leave a comment.

Here's the whole longlist, and here's who actually made the finals. Who would you have picked?

Free Download of the Day - 28th March 2013 - 'The Man Who Sold the World' by Great Pagans

Who could cover a David Bowie song, already covered by Kurt Cobain, and still give you something worth hearing?

Alex Painter, that's who. (That's the other thin white Duke).

Today's free Download of the Day is 'The Man Who Sold the World' by Painter's Great Pagans.



The track features as part of a huge Bowie tribute project by God is in the TV - go here for dozens of Bowie covers specially made by their favourite current artists.

You can download 'The Man Who Sold the World' from Great Pagans' Soundcloud, and buy their original music on their Bandcamp.

If you've never heard them before, this is Bowie's original, and this is the famous Nirvana cover.

Don't miss a free Download of the Day! Get updates on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or by email.

Free Download of the Day: 20th March 2013 - 'What Happen'd (live at Maps)' by SJ Esau

In the last Heartbeat of a Rabbit post, I mentioned Cajita's avowed 'mean live loop skills'. (It was Annie Hysterical who avowed them, by the way - to be precise, she said, 'he knows what he's doing').

The meanest live loop skills I have ever seen belong to yet another Bristol musician, SJ Esau. His live set in general is a great collision of talent and self-deprecation, as he alternates between astonishing you with his ability to build a song in front of your very eyes with his bare hands - and then, invariably, apologising for doing so.

An interview on the radio show 'Maps' which goes out on Bologna-based Radio Città del Capo is online including 3 tracks for free download. 'What Happen'd' is my Download of the Day.

Click here for the interview and download links and here to follow SJ Esau on Facebook.

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She Makes War - Never Was (Cajita remix)

So, apparently, checking how long it is since anything was last posted here... this was the first piece of music I cared enough about to blog about since New Year. Making it easily frontrunner for the Heartbeat of a Rabbit Tracks of the Year 2013, right? [Disclaimer: I will probably never get round to making one of those. Because I usually get to the end of the year and can think of about 2 and a half tracks I liked enough for such a list. This will be one of them].

 

She Makes War is Laura Kidd, she and Tom and Annie Hysterical make music together sometimes, an example of which is the live recording of 'In This Boat' which appears as this track's b-side and which was actually recorded in a boat - appropriate. She doesn't really make war, that's just a name. She makes music instead. If she did make war it would be beautiful, moody, catchy war, and she would Do It Herself.

Cajita is a Bristol musician I've clearly not paid enough attention to previously. I'm told he has mean live loop pedal skills.

I liked this track so much I paid more than she asked for it. You should too.

Free Download of the Day - 'Apologia' by The Douglas Firs

The first free download of the day for 2013 is 'Apologia' by The Douglas Firs. This track is from Armellodie Records' Sampler 2012 - there are 14 tracks by different artists available there for free download altogether.



You can download 'Apologia' from Armellodie Records' Bandcamp, and follow the Douglas Firs on their blog.

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Free Download of the Day - 'Hex Beast' by Landslide Purist

Today's free download of the day is 'Hex Beast' by Landslide Purist. This track is today's installment of the annual Madvent Chokalendar, wherein users of Bristol-based music forum Choke give away their music in the festive period each year. There might well be some more of the 'Chokalendar' tracks here as our Downloads of the Day over the next week.
You can download 'Hex Beast' from the Madvent Chokalendar - right click on the 7 and choose 'Save As' to claim it, and do explore the other tracks there too, there are always gems - and follow Landslide Purist on Soundcloud.

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Free Download of the Day - 'Way 2 Dark' by Twisted and Rakoon

Today's free download of the day is 'Way 2 Dark' by Twisted and Rakoon. Twisted and Rakoon are both members of the German-based Dutty Dubz Crew
.
You can download 'Way 2 Deep' from Twisted's Soundcloud and follow Dutty Dubz on their Facebook page. They're promising more free tracks over the next couple of days.

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Free Download of the Day - 'Move Me Starlet' by Yusuf Azak

Today's free download of the day is 'Move Me Starlet' by Yusuf Azak. The track is taken from Yusuf's current album 'Go Native'
.
You can download 'Move Me Starlet' from Yusuf's Amazing Tunes page (registration required, but don't worry - it's painless and opens up a world of possibilities) and find out more about him on the Song, By Toad website.

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Free Download of the Day - 'Blush' by Runaround Kids

Today's free download of the day is 'Blush' by Runaround Kids. The track is taken from the Philophobia band's current album 'Teeth Blue, Lips Red'
.


You can download 'Blush' from Runaround Kids' Bandcamp on a name-your-price basis, and find out more about them on their website.

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Free download of the day: 'Willkommen Patchwerk' by Willkommen Records

Today's free download of the day is 'Willkommen Patchwerk' by Willkommen Records. The label invited a panoply of artists with some connection to them to submit thirty seconds of sound, and stitched them all together, simply in the order they arrived.

Contributing artists include Heartbeat of a Rabbit favourites such as Gravenhurst, This Is the Kit, Rachael Dadd & Ichi, Laish and Birdengine. It's a brilliant introduction to the label and a mysterious journey of a composition in its own right.



You can download the Patchwerk from Willkommen's Soundcloud and find out more about the label on their website.

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Old Men Express

Have been helping Annie Hysterical check details of NME archives to make sure her installation for Ladyfest earlier this month wasn't too skewed by the fact of there being a few missing copies. 

We were pretty sure Annie wasn't misrepresenting anything, given that the sample used represents easily the vast majority of copies in the period shown (1989-2008). But people have been starting to ask questions for academic purposes, so we wanted to make sure it was watertight - that a large number of covers featuring females hadn't randomly been left out of those Annie had acquired for some reason, for example.

Not only are any concerns we might have had proving unfounded - take the main bands featured on the cover in 2008, one of the years most underrepresented in the sample, and you find the split is as follows:

Female: l
Male: llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
Both: llllll 

- the one female in question being Scarlett Johansson, since I'm sure you're curious. I do happen to think Scarlett is a wonderful singer; but I'll leave it to you to decide if you think that's the main reason she was the only woman to get a solo cover from them that year.

so it seems we had nothing to worry about, and in fact if that year had been better represented the 'male' pile in Annie's installation would be even more dominant. But beyond that, and rather sadly, the magazine seems to have given up any pretence this year of focusing on new music.

As far as cover star slots for the last 10 issues goes - 3 were taken by the Stone Roses, 1 The Ramones, 1 David Bowie, and 1 The Rolling Stones. 

This week's cover features Muse, announcing, "We're opening a door into the future!" 

Sounds like someone needs to.

Bristol Ladyfest 2012 review (Saturday, music)

‘For Whatever Reason’..(Access); Annie Gardiner, 2012

Installation of copies of NME magazine from 1989-2008. Piles of magazines divided by gender of artists depicted on the cover, as follows:

Female - Male - Both - None

Strange thing at Bristol Ladyfest, the latest installment of the global feminist festival phenomenon instigated in Washington 12 years ago by female artists including Sleater-Kinney: as pointed out by Katie Allen, the vast majority of the audience were unavoidably, visibly male.

Katie asks "do men support Ladyfest more than women?" In absence of other information, it's tempting to simply assume that the music audience at Bristol 2012 was a blip, and that Ladyfests in general benefit from female participation on the floor as much as on the stage. The other possibilities - either that the general sense of machismo-fuelled barriers to getting involved in music (which some female friends have talked about with me)* extend even to a female-run celebration of female creativity such as this; or, secondly, that women just aren't as interested in independent music as men - both seem implausible. But it was curious. This was my first Ladyfest - what are others' experiences? Was this a blip? They're usually not mostly attended by men, are they?

Drunken Butterfly were first on stage, minus their drummer. I first saw them at the Bristol Reclaim the Night after-party at the Stag and Hounds late last year and was reminded of The Pink Lemons' all-girl youthful vim... I have to say at that point I assumed they were a freshly formed band, but it seems they've been together since 2006! Tonight I think they missed their drummer, perhaps unwittingly, and it made those areas where the set needs work seem very obvious. I left after a certain point, unable to take any more of what seemed to me a stilted, tuneless performance. But they do have charm - and certainly youth - on their side. And they probably won't care about my review, anyway, they got a good one from The Girls Are and a lot more will read that than this. (Their best song, by the way, is the one that goes "I DON'T WANNA DIE! I WANNA PROTEST!", loudly, over and over again. If they played that at Ladyfest it was after I walked away.)

Rita Lynch

Rita Lynch followed by way of stark contrast. Her songs are visceral stories, she puts everything into it on stage, and it's captivating. Annie was inspired by it. It was only when it finished that I realise she did all that with just her voice and a guitar.

The Horn the Hunt

The Horn the Hunt have come down from Yorkshire for Ladyfest... we're glad they did. There is a shamanic sense to this four-piece's anthems. You feel at any point they could pick up a flag and lead everyone out of the venue, still singing and drumming, on some euphoric march to the mountains. Lead Hunter, Clare Carter, reminds me of no-one more than the otherwise-incomparable Jemma Roper - admittedly partly because they have a similar look, but they also share a kind of confidence in carrying their cantations from the other side. It could also do well for people who can't get enough Kate Bush in their lives (No bad thing either).

Straylings

I missed too much of Straylings to comment, likewise Rozi Plain who came later. My loss in both cases, I suspect.

Rachael Dadd

Rachael Dadd performed with a baby bump for what in some ways marked the first part of what could be seen as an extended performance from herself, Rozi Plain and fellow Whalebone Polly-member Kate 'This is the Kit' Stables, sharing as they all did each other's stages and to some extent sensibilities. They are a loosely geographically distributed collective [members at times as far away from the homeland and each other as France and Japan], but close-knit (and they surely do knit together). All this will no doubt sound nauseating to some who don't know them or their work, but the truth is they simply ooze charm and are good enough to confound any churlishness. For me the highlight of Rachael's set was her homely, rustic, relaxed song about making rice triangles(!) Its thrice-repeated lines echo the product, and its whole mood took us to a kitchen with a wooden floor somewhere in Japan, away from Tokyo.

She Makes War

Just like Rachael (and Annie who follows her on stage), Laura Kidd of She Makes War is a maker of things as well as music, and had been set to exhibit at the Ladyfest exhibition the following day. This was the third time I'd seen SMW live; the first two occasions were as support for Hysterical Injury. Not that those performances were any too shabby, but I think that her music had more room to breathe on this Ladyfest bill, where the edge and emotion in the songs weren't swamped by comparison to the relatively untamed noise of some of the bands at those gigs. It's also possible to be distracted by all the trappings - her sequinned cheeks; the aforementioned artistic bent; and sharp, at times self-deprecating wit ("Sorry, I have some albums for sale, sorry, I hate saying that, sorry...") Ignore those margins to focus on the performance, though, and there is more to it than show. Her glamorous visage distorted in expression at the heart of songs like 'In this Boat', to leave little doubt about the soul behind them.

Hysterical Injury

No point in me saying what I thought of Hysterical Injury, (because). Here is what some others there said:
"@hiband are fucking awesome" - Shrag
"...favourite new discovery is @hiband" - Rachael Dadd
"Saw this band (Hysterical Injury) and was totally blown away by them" - Mary Epworth
"...utterly, loudly, hysterically awesome" - Cajita
About half of DW's emails are about how awesome Ladyfest, and in particular hiband was/were/are. I approve." - Tiffany Daniels/(Drunken Werewolf)
"Everything in life lets you down, in the end, except for the Hysterical Injury" - The Girls Are


So, a mixed bag.


As much a success as Ladyfest felt, it was a pity we couldn't ever quite say the Fleece was rammed; not only because it was for good causes, but because the top three billed acts in particular - This is the Kit, Shrag and Mary Epworth - would look good on anybody's bill, leaving gender and politics aside.


Mary Epworth was in full swing when I caught up with her set. It's hard to pin down her music, it comes across in a way that makes the (presumably slightly tongue in cheek??) description currently up on Wikipedia ["Mary Epworth makes music influenced by traditional English song, 60s west coast Psychedelia, and Greek Progressive Rock"] - seem entirely plausible. She stands right at the front of the stage, belting out folk-gothic lyrics ("There like a brace of blackened bone / think they know more than us" - 'Black Doe'), with an incongruous country swagger and alpha grin, like Smoke Fairies in a spectacularly good mood - or - um - Queen Adreena covering Dolly Parton, if you can imagine such a thing.

Shrag.
Men in band blurred and blocked by pillars,
on purpose, because it's Ladyfest. Honest.

So I finally get to see Shrag! (or Sussex Heights Roving Arts Group, to give them their full, long-abandoned title) I've wanted to see them for years, and their Rabbit Kids video featured on the first post of this blog. They are every bit as raucous and infectious live as their recorded tracks suggest. Lead vocalist Helen King in particular jerks, jumps and bunches herself up as if possessed by the songs throughout. Their brand new album Canines is out now.

This is the Kit

And finally a (happily) long day comes to an end with This is the Kit, whose band tonight boasts among others Rachael Dadd and Rozi Plain from earlier and Neil of The Liftmen on guitar (and that is something to boast about). A couple of people during the day had voiced their uncertainty to me about the wisdom of This is the Kit headlining; suggesting that a quieter, calmer band wasn't right to finish on. And admittedly this would have been a daunting bill to top for many performers. It's a big mistake, though, to think of Kate Stables and her outfit as 'fey' or 'whimsical' in that way that way that sometimes really means 'flimsy'. While she's singing, she adopts a serious, determined countenance that belies the easy, lighthearted banter that comes between songs. Also the band she surrounds herself with - both in numbers and talent - back her swift-like, easy-sounding vocal acrobatics with a full, rich sound; especially while Rachael Dadd picks up her clarinet. Both of these things - the attitude in and between songs; and the easy complexity of them - reminded me of nobody more than the last act that brought me to the Fleece - the justly vaunted Field Music. And all of that adds up to an experience that is right, natural, brilliant, sublime.

'Easy Pickings' stood out for me, so to close this review here's another performance of the same, for 'Songs from the Shed':

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*In case anyone reading this is wondering why women might feel excluded from music in this day and age, and why people feel a need for events like Ladyfest, one only needs to consider Annie's shocking-if-not-surprising image, at the top of this post, to understand how 'music' might feel like a scene in which only men are allowed access. Her installation, made for this event, collates copies of NME over a 20-year period of the 90s and early 2000s, sorted according to artists on the cover, by gender: Female - Male - Both - None. It drives a skewer through the idea that access for women, much though it might have moved on, has become close to 'equal' in the last 100 or 500 years. Incidentally, in the last few weeks that same magazine has also shown it can't tell one major female artist in that period from another, and squandered their review of the peerless Gaggle's debut album by taking it as an opportunity to insult feminist stereotypes. Some work to do there, perhaps.